Thank you cards always convey a message of warmth and sincerity. Learning how to make thank you cards is deceptively simple. When you know the recipient on a personal level, it’s pretty straightforward. In business however, it can be a bit different. The relationship between businesses and their customers often has barriers that make creating an emotional bond a bit more of a challenge.

Following these guidelines may help thank you cards cultivate the emotional bonds your business needs to create loyal brand advocates. Try these out the next time you order thank you cards.

1.) Understand your audience.

This is important not just for your thank you cards, but for all your promotional campaigns as well. Different enterprises serve people from vastly different subcultures, dependent on geography, generation, and shared histories. An approach that works for one market may not work so well in another. Be sure to use your specific knowledge of your customers as well as analyzing data about them to get a better idea of what approach may work best.

2.) Choose your core concepts.

Now that you’ve figured out what kind of approach might work best with your audience, you can choose specific themes for your content, designs and images. It’s best that these are considered together so that the final thank you cards are more put-together. This is especially important if your graphic designers and copywriters are different people. It’s often clear from the final output if the copywriters and designers worked together on it. If it looks like no forethought was put into your thank you cards, it can severely detract from their outcome.

3.) Personalize your message.

This can mean many things, from crafting your greetings and openers for each individual recipient, to signing each card by hand, rather than through an obvious printed reproduction. These might seem like little things, but people do notice them. Whether or not you choose to do these small but potentially labor intensive actions is up to you.

Fun fact: the appearance of a manually created signature is so important, niche equipment is available to reliably simulate them.

4.) Remember to appeal to their emotions.

This is why you are creating thank you cards in the first place, rather than sending an email. Don’t lose sight of your main objective, which is to reinforce the bonds you have with your customers. If the initial designs seem a bit impersonal, try to figure out what’s keeping your design and copy from making a connection. Don’t just learn how to make thank you cards because it’s what other businesses do.

5.) Review and revise your thank you card’s design.

You can use flat thank you card templates and folded thank you card templates to easily create drafts of your card designs. This will help you better visualize the final product. Drafting with a template should also give a better idea of how to make your designs work better in print. First drafts rarely hit the mark, so be sure to create multiple studies if you can spare the time.

Brands are all about emotion, and few print materials can hit us at an emotional level like a heartfelt thank you card. We hope these guidelines help you better connect with your customers, and help shed some insight into designing and printing thank you cards.

What other thank you card design guidelines would you add? Comment below.